Saturday in the First Week of Ordinary Time, January 17, 2026

Mark 2:13-17

Jesus went out along the sea. All the crowd came to him and he taught them. As he passed by, he saw Levi, son of Alphaeus, sitting at the customs post. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed Jesus. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners sat with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him. Some scribes who were Pharisees saw that Jesus was eating with sinners and tax collectors and said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus heard this and said to them, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

“Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When we read this question posed by the Pharisees, we are likely to put emphasis on “tax collectors and sinners”, as though it read: Why would he eat with them. But we can read the question another way, putting emphasis on “he”: Why does he, who performs miracles, eat with them? 

Throughout the first and second chapters of his Gospel, Mark reports that Jesus had performed many miracles in and around the city of Capernaum, including an exorcism within the synagogue. He had spent hours healing people who came from far and near, and had even proven that he possessed the power to forgive sins. Along with the sick, the blind, and the lame came the local Pharisees. They witnessed the healings, they heard the Lord preach, they asked questions about him and his origins. In the end they could not say who he was. He could not be the Messiah: “But we know this man, where he is from: but when the Christ comes, no man knows where he  comes from” (John 7, 27). Nor did he claim to be the Messiah — or anyone else. So they watched him carefully, this man of mystery and contradiction, this man of power.

Furthermore, he chose his disciples. But no teachers did that. A student who wanted to learn from a particular teacher would seek the man out and ask to learn from him. But here is Jesus picking his own students, and the least likely students: fishermen. And now he picks a tax collector. Just as astonishing, the tax collector agrees to be his student, giving up his lucrative tax collecting position.

And now this Jesus goes to eat at the tax collector’s house. The Pharisees note to their confusion and horror: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Why does this man of wisdom and divine power, choose to eat with these people? What could he want with them? What did his preference for fellowship say about him?

The Lord tells them: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” This would have come to the Pharisees as incomprehensible babble. This man of power calls himself a physician and says that “he has come” to “call” the sick, the sinners. This was not the way justice worked, in their minds. A person who sinned must seek out help for himself, but here was Jesus who went to sinners in order to call them to repentance and who would forgive their sins. The Pharisees and the priests would walk by a sinner without a word, just as the Levite and the priest had walked by the robbed and wounded man whom the Good Samaritan healed.

We should be filled with awe that the Son of God has chosen us to follow him, to be joined to him through baptism, to receive him in Holy Communion. Who is he, indeed, who would do this for us?